Escape the Room: The Cursed Dollhouse Review - with Tom Vasel

Tom Vasel takes a look at an escape room game with an actual dollhouse!
00:00 - Introduction
00:45 - Game overview
03:08 - Thoughts
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BGG Link: boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3...

[@81hewp]

Just started this game last night with my buddies. We got thru the first room and left off with one clue left to figure out in the second room. We had a flashlight and magnifying glass out to use, and we are moving that dollhouse all over to look into it. Looking forward to finishing room 2 . Fun part of the game is seeing the different personalities work together to solve puzzles.

[@pirotehs]

If I remember correctly, Tom was saying that first two games in this series was too light. Thinkfun can't get a break.
I liked first two, so I will be suffering through this one at some point too.

[@justinsmith5582]

Crazy hearing how hard it is, since I found the other two in this series are probably the easiest escape room games I have played.
Maybe they overcompensated too much.

[@squidracerX]

I have never played one of these before - seem like good "date night" games? Any recommendations?

[@CV-lm7pv]

Annabelle Escapes: The Game.

[@ClaraMBarker]

Creepy and hard puzzles, I really want to play this through now!

[@NinjaCrosley]

This looks awesome

[@martinteece8983]

The escape the room francise is a hard ish series. But the unlock series is best for simplicity but omg they scale up difficulty

[@mserlin]

Great review. I just completed this and couldn't agree more. I've played over 200 actual escape rooms so I think I have a good understanding of what makes a room fun and this misses the mark. There's good challenging and bad challenging and this is the latter. Good challenging is when you ask for a hint and then kick yourself for not figuring it out. Bad challenging is when you ask for a hint and realize there is no way in heck anyone could ever figure that out. It's too bad because the physical dollhouse is brilliant and if this were designed by a true escape room enthusiast it would easily be a wonder. Check out neil Patrick Harris' new OneBox. It's everything this game isn't :)

[@MrSampsonne]

The idea that trashing and rebuying rather than doing some work to reset struck a weird chord with me. To be fair, I did the print out and reset for the previous 2 Thinkfun escape room games. Print, cut, repack all in was maybe 15mins to a half hour. The games are about $20 each, so we’re looking at $60/hr for my time worst case to have a game in the box that I could run for a group of friends to enjoy. Yes please. It’s possible the years of constant inflow of games sent by publishers to review has changed the perception of value for the dice tower staff. I don’t know what Tom or anyone could possibly do any differently in that regard, but the truth remains that when you work very hard for every dollar you earn like I’m sure most of those reading this do, Tom included, the concept of trashing something to avoid a little work and reaching in your pocket instead takes on a different meaning.

[@therightside7462]

I agree. We played that other two and put back everything. We do exit games the same. This way other people can play it again.

[@drewcourtney376]

I work hard for my money, and especially at $40 I'll probably try to repack this somehow. But, considering this actually uses cardboard furniture and pieces slotting together, Tom might have spoiler reasons for saying he'd just buy another copy. The first one just needed to be retaped, then again everything was just lose pieces in envelopes. This might be...a little more.
This video shows the setup, unboxing, so it's almost a spoiler: czcams.com/video/KUTurb4oOKg/video.html

[@zoyaspetsandfuntoysworld3193]

it. is. Crazy

[@BrandonGeorge]

Doll house first!

[@garys4067]

Creepy frustration is definitely not for me!

[@bdizzle2144]

Pretty frustrating when you spend money on something and it makes you feel dumb.